The Rover: A Critical Look at Behn’s use of Comedy When one pictures the literary and theatrical world of 17th century England, it is hard to believe that a woman as extraordinary and seditious as Aphra Behn was able to write and publish such revolutionary plays at the capacity she achieved. Having already seen six of her plays produced for stage, she was something of an “anomalous figure” in the theatrical community (Behn 14). However, the first known edition of her Restoration comedy “The Rover” was published anonymously with reference to the author as male in the prologue. One can speculate that due to the bawdy nature of “The Rover” Behn felt it was safer to publish anonymously considering the themes explored in the play. Anne Russell …show more content…
However, even as times changed and women were able to take to the stage the “fascination with crossdressing was so deeply ingrained in pre-Restoration theatrical practice, that it resurfaced in what is known as the ‘breeches part.’” (Behn 19) Referring to the breeches worn by men at the time, a “breeches part” was often added to plays with no real significance to the plot, usually to titillate the audience by having an actress show off a little more skin than what was typical of the time. Conversely, Behn’s use of crossdressing in “The Rover” is an interesting satirical plot device, perhaps used to prove that “women could share the same libertine philosophy with men and experience its liberating effects, in much the same way as she was able to compete on relatively equal terms with the best male playwrights of her time” (Behn 19). Hellena’s use of crossdressing is a radical act, one that challenges strict gender norms of that period, while remaining palatable to the audience. Through skillful comedic writing, Behn is able to create a scene that is both a tense and dramatic confrontation between Wilmore and Angellica, and a light-hearted comical dialogue where Hellena diffuses the situation by confessing her love for Wilmore in disguise. Hellena’s use of disguise is especially interesting when contrasted to Florinda’s …show more content…
Hellena entirely disrupts societal norms of women of her time period, she is an inspirational and empowering character with a charming wit and bold perspective. Behn’s use of Hellena to explore radical notions of their era such as women taking back their independence, women taking charge of their sexuality, and women exploring gender roles and the effect of their clothing is an moving tale. Through skillful use of comedy, Behn is able to weave a story rich in crowd-pleasing delights and protofeminist discourse
The plays Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Sophocles’ Antigone, examine the contrast between the roles of women versus the roles of men in a male dominated society. Women are often viewed as inferior to men. The women in Trifles are second class citizens, who are to follow the beliefs and commands of man, whereas Antigone is a headstrong and defiant woman, who doesn’t mind challenging a man’s authority. In both these plays, the women showed great courage and bravery by going against cultural conventions and defying the rules of man.
Margaret Atwood’s speech ‘Spotty-Handed Villainesses’ is an epideictic text, which explores the significance of having a multi-faceted depiction of female characters within literature as a means of achieving gender equity, centring on the fictional presentation of women as either virtuous or villainess. The title of the speech
While examining nineteenth-century female monster, Susanne Beacker reveals that she remains a mere idea, a “voiceless textual object” in women’s gothic texts whose happy endings close to the retribution and exorcism of the monstrous woman and the entrapment of the heroine in the patriarchal system (72). In this context, DeLamotte contends that:
Zeitz, Lisa M. and Thoms, Peter. “Power, Gender and Identity in Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’.” Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Spec. issue of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 37.3 (1997) : 501-16. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb 2011.
The relationship between male and females within literary works can be expressed in a variety of different ways. Often times, gender roles are solidified to present the man as a dominant and overpowering figure, where the woman is seen as nurturing and are many times objectified due to this nature. In “Poof”, the reader is presented with an example of a woman who is ‘too accepting’ and ‘too giving’ to her male spouse, where as in “Good and Gone”, a male protagonist shatters the dominating nature of the standardized gender roles by loving a woman based off of common interest, not based off of submissive nature. Comparing these two protagonists of both plays, the writers, EP3C and Lynn Nottage, present a duality of dramatic effects by either
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, was written in 1916, reflects the author’s concern with stereotypical concepts of gender and sex roles of that time period. As the title of the play implies, the concerns of women are often considered to be nothing more than unimportant issues that have little or no value to the true work of society, which is being performed by men. The men who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable to solve the mystery through their supposed superior knowledge. Instead, two women are able decipher evidence that the men overlook because all of the clues are entrenched in household items that are familiar mainly to women during this era. Glaspell expertly uses gender characterization, setting, a great deal of symbolism and both dramatic and verbal irony, to expose social divisions created by strict gender roles, specifically, that women were limited to the household and that their contributions went disregarded and underappreciated.
When the play was set in 1912, women had lacked empowerment and rights, while men had a higher status in society, despite women had no important role in society. By using Priestley’s Inspector Calls we can identify how women were portrayed in the early 20th century. Priestley has explored this in a variety of ways, by customizing the different types of female character to show an insight on how they have viewed upon the world and importantly on how they were treated differently based on several factors like class, money, and age. For an instance, Priestley uses traditional women and transitional women to contrast their lifestyle when it was set in the Edwardian Era.
First, no matter what is represented on stage, the fact that boys are actually playing cross dressing men and women is insistently metaphorical; the literal fact of trans-vestism (that is, the boy actor impersonating either a woman, a woman cross dressed as a man, or a man cross dressed as a woman, not the represented character) is divided between the homoerotic and the blurring of gender. On the other hand, the represented female character who cross dresses functions literally to relieve the boy actor, at least for a time, from impersonating a woman. Represented characters who cross dress may pre-sent a variety of poses, from the misogynist mockery of the feminine to the adroitly and openly homoerotic. In the case of the title character of Jonson's Epicoene, the motif is utilized as disguise intended to effect a surprise ending for Morose and his heterosexual audience, for whom the poet also pr...
... comedies rather than tragedies in their source form the original characters from the source plays are revealed. Strong, ‘masculine’ women of the source are only revealed through the intertextuality of genre and the reassigned direct quotes from Shakespeare’s iconic plays. The feminist perspective of Shakespeare’s plays, which was there all along, could only be revealed by the strong use of intertextuality in MacDonald’s play. MacDonald relies on the iconic meta-theatre and intertextuality to magnify the feminist perspective within the Shakespearean plays. When turned in upon itself, Shakespeare’s plays reveal their distinct feminist perspective that could not be uncovered without the extensive and brilliant use of intertextuality such as that of Ann Marie MacDonald. Therefore the metatheatre’s intertextuality reinforces and supports the traits of the feminine.
In her play Widow Ranter, Aphra Behn takes quite a solid approach in disrupting the social order by empowering women. She presents the women with characteristics of authoritative figures. Set in 17th century Virginia, Behn use Bacon's Rebellion and the stereotypes of a developing colonial society as a foundation for developing gender politics at the time. Her play also attempts to justify the Emipre’s imposition of their social hierarchy within the Virginian society criticizing the wrongful seizure of power by those without the authority or nobility to do so.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
All throughout the early part of history women were portrayed as the inferior sex, because at that point in time, women were seen as beings only born to have children. Men didn’t think that women were capable of being anything other than a typical housewife. It was unthinkable that women would actually need an education, let alone earn a living, or become a leader. These ideas are revealed all throughout classical literature. Rarely was a woman seen as doing anything but being dominated by males in some form, whether she was a man’s submissive devoted wife, a sexual object, or a woman being punished for wanting her freedom. We finally begin to see women trying to break free from these traditional expectations and barriers through the lives of Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, John’s wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong.
The scene that evidently defines Satine’s character is her performance of “Sparkling Diamonds”. During this moment, all eyes are on Satine, staring at her astonishing beauty. The female lead is now being presented to all as an object whom men desire to have and women desire to become. This scene is an adequate example of the male gaze which is “the cinema’s frequent positioning of women as objects (Ott & Mack, 2010).” This theory is manifested through the way the object, Satine, is framed by the camera lens. A better vantage point is given to the spectators by positioning her higher than everybo...
Behn is remarkable because as a spy for the British crown and the first woman to make a living as a writer, she circumnavigated her gender and claimed an identity previously only thought possible for a man. In her 1677 play The Rover, Behn laments that her female characters are trapped w...
In Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, between the categories of virgin and whore lies a void rather than a spectrum. The three leading ladies of the play Hellena, Florinda and Angellica most certainly fall into these categories; Hellena and Florinda being virginal ladies of quality and Angellica being a famous courtesan. These three women attempt to challenge these roles throughout the play. Aphra Behn uses the domination of the men over the women, the objectification of the women and the double standards that exist between men and women to illustrate the impossibility of taking one’s sexuality into one’s own hands, and challenging the assigned roles of the patriarchal society for the female characters in the play.